Bitcoin Forum

Hello,


I was thinking of doing some guerilla marketing for Bitcoin using this letter:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q6WiJPvmx3FCwgSRAcie9-Ay3Pz54GUhlfTXtVlZDFE/edit?usp=sharing

It's a working document that anyone can comment on and download in PDF.  Maybe we could start editing this and improving the wording/facts?  Also, if you already have your own letter(s) - perhaps targeted at small or large business - you could post a reply with a link to yours!


Vive la Revolution!
Matt

nope

your letter is wrote with tooooo much geek speak

try again, but do it with less paragraphs and in plain laymans english.

eg

I’m writing to ask you to consider accepting Bitcoin at [Business Name].  It’s a revolutionary currency in which people around the world can make transactions instantly.  Merchants and customers pay almost nothing for this service!  Because a lot of money goes into making fiat currency transactions seamless and secure, Credit card fees are too high as we know it.  The Bitcoin changes all of this by being secured by encryption and not being sourced in one location which irradiates manipulation and ensures Bitcoin isn’t controlled by any single entity or government.  
...

You can be in full control by selling the bitcoins back to legal tender using services like localbitcoins whenever you like, or hold onto them for investment purposes. Because it’s relatively new (5 years old), Bitcoin’s value is a little volatile.  However, companies like Coinbase and Bitpay offer merchants the opportunity to accept Bitcoin at zero risk to this volatility through the option to immediately convert transactions to legal tender making it an automated and risk free option, should you choose that route.  Large companies like Dell, Dish, and Expedia, as well as hundreds of thousands of “Mom and Pop” stores are now accepting Bitcoin to take advantage of the near zero transaction fees.  This new technology is saving businesses and consumers a lot of money!  The only people who don’t benefit from this system are the credit card companies and intermediaries.  Before bitcoin, these corporations “granted” us the power of monetary transactions - but now the power is yours without their consent.

It may not be the best letter I've seen and there may be better ways of spreading the word. But I've definitely seen worse! Kudos that he's trying to spread the word and hey, he's inviting us to change the letter! So let's not complain, but rather improve things!

How are worse letters relevant to this one? Franky is right, they will not understand it and that will scare them off (average humans).
This would work if it was a bit shorter, and a bit less complicated. OP +1 for trying.

Just trying to tell people that it's not especially helpful just to tell people how bad their work is. They most likely will stop improving when you do that. If we offer honest and helpful critique, who knows, maybe he will come up with the best Bitcoin pitch letter there is!

You said that bitcoin price is a little volatile, maybe you could fix that in : very volatile. Maybe you are not that much into finance, but in BTC world 10% price change is normal, which is not normal for most of the assets out there. Imagine EUR/USD change in 10% per day, that would cause colapse to the most of the economies.

You can take a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. Retailers and the like will come on board when and if, and only if, bit coin proves it's worth.

Until then we are stuck with cash, debit cards, credit cards, pay pal....

Whoever felt they really needed to deface it, really?

It only takes 2 seconds to restore it to the old version. It's like defacing wikipedia, there's absolutely no point.

You should put emphasize on the upsides of Bitcoin. There are quite a few people who became millionaires by using this great currency! Hehe!

i didnt realise the document was publicly editable. hmm i guess it is to be expected that some troll would deface it.

i usually post edits in the forum and allow the OP to edit it from a closed document, saves feeding the trolls

Ok,


I went back and took out geeky wording and made it shorter.  I also tweaked the format a little.  Thanks for your help Franky1, and thanks for the encouragement Minerpumpkin!  I think it's looking a lot better already!

Here's a link back to the document.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q6WiJPvmx3FCwgSRAcie9-Ay3Pz54GUhlfTXtVlZDFE/edit?usp=sharing

Also, that's a better idea Franky1:  I'll make it uneditable for the trolls, but you can still make comments on it.  Any revisions or ideas for wording can go in this thread!


Thanks so much,
Matt

first paragraph... ummm no
the security of bitcoin has nothing to do with price(FIAT/legal tender value of a coin) manipulation, but irradicates balance / personal holdings (amount of bitcoin) manipulation

second paragraph

firstly i replaced dollars as i was thinking of making the letter more international so it can be usedin the UK or urope without editing. i though using FIAt was a weird word so chose legal tender.. bt now reading it back, maybe either go with dollar or use the words national currency. as the words 'legal tender' may make people think that bitcoins are not 'legal' and open up a floodgate of questioning about if bitcoin is illegal to use. (laymans thinking)

my previous post was saying basically, you can either do it manually yourself using localbitcoins and sell back to dollar/national currency when you like, or just hoard.... or you can automate it using coinbase/bitpay and take the manual effort and price volitility out of the equation for a subscription/small fee.

but it seems like your trying to push them the coinbase/bitpay route without showing all options.. which is kind of leading the customer down a narrow path.

third paragraph

bitpay/coinbase do have fee's though. so becareful not to promise things that are untrue

Great points, especially about the "legal tender" ambiguity.  I went in and changed it up a bit.

And you're right, I am sort of pushing them the Coinbase/Bitpay route.  My initial thinking was that'd be easier for them than Localbitcoins since Coinbase/Bitpay have services geared toward merchants.  But'll I'll add in Localbitcoins to give them a broader scope of possible exchange methods.  If they're interested, they can decide upon more research.  It'll vary from business to business I'm sure.

Here's the document again:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q6WiJPvmx3FCwgSRAcie9-Ay3Pz54GUhlfTXtVlZDFE/edit?usp=sharing


Good work, and thanks again!

How much do plan on spending with these merchants, OP? What's your monthly BTC budget?

Just FYI, sending letters is direct mailing not guerrilla marketing

Marketing means selling. So, marketing what? BTC? You can sell your BTCs any time without any marketing.  :) "To businesses" - your ambitions are high :) Maybe you can start "guerilla marketing" of the BTC from your local grocery shop around the corner? That would be more realistic.

to be honest, i still think the letter is too waffly.

do you think mastercard talk about dollars with paragraphs describing the cotton paper and patented ink. or the method of joining the chip to the plastic card, or the database link of the accounts.

i think there needs to be less waffle about the decentralised protocols and more about the:
no chargeback
pennies(3c) vs quarters(30c) fee's
hoarding for future gains

basically the practical stuff, not the protocol stuff.. after all if your pushing for coinbase/bitpay. the protocol and security is meaningless to a merchant as its all automated by a third party. all the merchant and customer see's is a QR code.

they dont see or know of the 'ledger' or the encryption stuff, they dont see it as being decentralised, as all their trades go through one company.. not random people.

(sorry for the backwar and forward thinking from post to post. but i tailor my sales pitches to each individual business and the more i read your letter pretending im busines xyz, abc efg etc in different scenarios, the more questions rather than answers i see them come up with)

That's exactly what I intend to do! :)  And my hope is to provide a sample letter from which anyone else who wanted to do this sort of grassroots marketing could draw from.

That's a really good point, Franky.  Pitching Bitcoin as a means of saving money would speak pretty loudly to businesses as a whole.  If we pitch that idea first, maybe we can grab their attention more directly.  They don't have to have a philisophical/technological point of view to see how Bitcoin can help them:  so why endorse those ideas so heavily in the letter?  If the business is just interested in saving money - great!  If they're interested in the societal impact - also great!  But those are things they'll decided on an personal level.  Speaking about the expense-saving side of Bitcoin will speak more directly to all businesses.

Thanks for the input, I'll work on revising it.

Nailed it. The above sentences are an adequate sales pitch imo.

Ok,

Here's the most recent revision.  It's speaking more from a money-saving perspective.  But, from a societal perspective, it still has a brief call to action at the end:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q6WiJPvmx3FCwgSRAcie9-Ay3Pz54GUhlfTXtVlZDFE/edit?usp=sharing

It's still a work in progress, so please comment and post suggestions if you have any ideas.  It's open to criticism ...just make sure it's constructive! :)


Thanks again to everyone who's helped out!

I think you should completely leave volatility out and dont bother with localbitcoins. Tell them to use payment gateway like Bitpay and Coinbase right off the bat. No point hoping the business to hold any btc amount so dont mention volatility as it doesnt matter.

Explain that the payment gateway is like paypal, sign up and you never have to look at btc exchange rate, its just a payment method from their point of view.

Your letter will never be taken seriously as is. Again focus on payment method/network. Not bothering to explain much about btc, they will learn about it soon enough. The main focus of a business is sales and cost of tx, remember that.

Very good idea to collaborate with the Bitcoin community and encourage people to contact their favorite retailers I have contacted a few in my time using Bitcoin and have only received two replies (If I recall accurately) but the ones that did respond stated they are looking into new payment gateways all the time and are well aware Bitcoin. I don't know whether it was the way I write the email or whether they have already looked into Bitcoin but the two that responded pretty much said the same thing.

i agree removing the volatility part to some extent. if it was purely talking about coinbase/bitpay. but then your back to the rabbit hole of it sounding like bitcoin is a product of bitpay, that its corporate and lack of choice/options/freedoms.

i have spoke to many merchants and just pushing bitpay made the merchants feel like they are being consulted by a company, but telling them they can do things themselves and save even more money, or have the convenience of a service to take the hassle away cheaper than mastercard, works.

in my experience its better to say

"do you want this pencil for free but you have to sharpen it now and again, or this pen for 30c, which would you prefer?"
rather than
"this pen is 30c will you take it?"

I disagree.

In your pencil analogy, to be realisitic it would be " the pencil MAY be free if you have the TOOLS to sharpen it". The TOOLS here are compliance with regulation rules, exchange risks and etc... You get the point.

OR the business can just buy this pencil at a price. The price will only be more competitive in the future as more competitors coming in.

The bottom line is the pencil is still alot cheaper than buying it from MC/VISA.

To gain merchant acceptance you must focus on their point of view. There is no downside in "using this payment method" only upside. And there is no extra work being involved which let businesses focus on what they're doing best.

I can definitely see your point.  Bitpay and Coinbase offer great deals and keep the automated system businesses are used to.  So I think at this point, most businesses will probably choose Bitpay and Coinbase, just because they don't want to learn something new just yet.  Which is fine!  Like you said, they can focus on what they do best.  But also, if Bitcoin becomes more popular (especially if/when people start trusting it as its own currency) businesses might want to learn how they can be in total control of their money.  Maybe sharpening the pencil themselves will become more and more just another casual part of their business procedures.

Which is why your letter will not be helpful. We're not there yet. One step of a time.

I agree that we're not there yet.  But isn't letting businesses know about Bitcoin, thus getting more people on the ground interested in Bitcoin, part of the progress?  At this stage, doesn't a letter asking businesses to get on board fit in with all this?

I'll listen.  What do you think the next step is?  Or what do you think we should we be focused on now?

LOL whats your goal sending this letter?

To tell ppl how great btc is or to have merchants adoption?

As you already know, having merchants adoption is infact what would make btc great. Go one step at a time.

So go edit your letter to archive that goal. Clearly right now its just a confusing spam letter.
 

My goal is to provide people with a template letter:  a letter to give to local businesses asking them to start accepting Bitcoin.  It's for people who want to do some grassroots marketing with local businesses - to get the word out about Bitcoin.

You say it's clearly just a bunch of spam at this point.  Could you point out the spam, specifically?  I'm looking for constructive criticism and ideas from the community.  If we work together on this, we can make it legitimate.

Thanks,
Matt

Sure,

Based on what you wrote, the goal is to have business accepting btc, correct?

Then remove all the market volatility, and keep it simple to fit their bottom line : sales and cost of tx. Thats it.

There are currently only 2 accredited payment gateway for bitcoin: Bitpay and Coinbase. And their fees are already low. No need to talk much about price of btc etc... just talk about easy to integrate, and fees are near zero. Do tell them that Coinbase has the first $1M in tx for free, 1% after that, while Bitpay has 1% or $30 flat fee.

Think of bitcoin as email. Do mainstream ppl want to understand how emails work? and that they can have their own email servers, ....etc ? I'm sure if you pitch someone into using email you would say, sign up on Gmail, yahoo or hotmail and that they can send mails digitally in sec ....

Anyway, i think i made myself clear enough. English isnt my native language, so i hope someone can contribute in writing for you.


EDIT:
To be more clear, all of that is irrelevant from the business's stand point of view.

Very well said!  Good analogy to email.  I'll definitely take that into consideration as I revise it.  Thanks!

lol, i can tell these people are not in marketing...

guys the pencil analogy and localbitcoins, is not about selling them into localbitcoins or selling them a pencil..

its called open questioning. its about avoiding yes/no answers. its about avoiding the OBVIOUS hard sale of a one way street..

ofcourse the merchant will go the bitpay/coinbase(pen) route as its obvious they are most convenient. but its not about making him chose yes or no to go that route. its about saying, options 1 2 or 3.. (avoiding yes and no's), making it appear that your not forcing a definete answer on him, but allowing him to decide the best way forward(allowing him to think he is in control).

telling someone the best way is this 1 option, makes some business owners think your treating them like they have been doing it wrong for years, demoralising them by saying they are missing out on this great new thing that could have saved them money for the last 5 years.

but giving them options empowers them to instead of acting defensive with a yes or no answer.. to choose what they think is in their best interest, even though deep down you gave them the choice.
...

ok most of you sound like teenagers, so here's one that will appeal to you:
i walk upto you with a woman and say, "hey guys, i got this lady here, she is hott, she can do pretty much anything your heart desires. do you want her"

smart people will immediately think.. hmm sounds like there a catch.. whats this guys agenda.. whats wrong with her for him to want to hand her over..

but if i came in with three women and said
"girl A: she is a bit uptight but she is honest and loyal and good in bed"
"girl B: she wil do what you want to her but she may ask for a bit of money after"
"girl C: she is free but you have to romance her abit first, you know get her talking"

now your probably trying to pick a b or c. you probably already have picked one. and not even been worrying as much about why im offering you the girls as your first thought

Thanks Franky.  That's a good point about keeping it open ended.  I tried keeping that in mind in the most recent revision.

Here's the link again:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q6WiJPvmx3FCwgSRAcie9-Ay3Pz54GUhlfTXtVlZDFE/edit?usp=sharing


Thanks

getting better, but there are a million and one ways to write a letter, each with their flaws..



merchant fee's should be changed to 'service charges'.. because its 'services' like bitpay that charge..

and the bit about money transfers from customer to merchant??? if your advertising bitpay then the bitcoin is transferring to bitpay not the merchant.

change our to their.. as it sounds like credit card company's charge alot to keep our bitcoin secure, especially when you introduced yourself as the bitcoin community..

when i got a spare half our ill dig around for my old letters i sent out or ill write a full letter

This is correct. Companies ultimately care about their bottom line and want to keep costs as low as possible.

quick edit :D

As a loyal customer of yours I am writing to ask if you have ever looked into the growing number of businesses now accepting Bitcoin currency. We all know credit card companies spend lots of money to keep their system secure, so they have high service fee’s. Yet because Bitcoin’s uniqueness is secured by its very nature, meaning there is little to no fee.

You can accept and process bitcoin currency yourself very easily and have no fee’s because your setting the pricing and manually converting to local currency, or you can use merchant services to automate the whole process which charge a lot less than credit card companies do. Thats just one of the freedoms the bitcoin currency offers, choice.

By accepting Bitcoins, like a number of big companies such as Dell, Dish, Expedia, as well as thousands of small businesses already have. You’ll enjoy Bitcoin’s ease of use, little to no costs, no chargebacks and the sheer publicity of accepting it.

The invention of Bitcoin, much like the invention of the Internet itself, is a revolution - both economically and socially.  It puts merchants and consumers in direct control of their money.  And you can play a vital role in this revolution simply by accepting Bitcoins!  You’ll save a lot of money and cater to a growing consumer base.  I look forward to you accepting Bitcoin at [Business Name] soon, because I look forward to buy more things from you.  Below are some helpful links if you’d like to learn more!


1. i changed 'Bitcoin' into bitcoin currency, to make it sound less like a centralised company brand and more like a open-use currency
2. i added the manual payment option and the choice of services to not seem like a one way street and allow the merchant choices
3. i wrote it to sound like a request from a loyal customer as if accepting bitcoin hewill get more sells. also making it sound less 'cold caller sales pitchy'
4. i removed the 'hope you'll consider' and used 'look forward to you accepting' as it sounds like you (the writer) trust bitcoins more